June’s products of the month with Ocee Design

This June team GREY’s ‘products of the month’ are from one of our favourite acoustic furniture manufactures – Ocee Design. After Paul, our project and furniture manager, completed the Ocee ‘Acoustic and ergonomic foundation level’ - we got in contact with Ocee to find out more about the science behind their acoustic products and feature them here on our blog!

‘Ergonomics is the applied science of understanding you and your interaction with everything around you; it focuses on your environment as a whole and not just one element of it. Good ergonomics maximises your comfort, safety and performance to increase your efficiency and wellbeing.’ - Ocee Design

‘Our understanding of how people function in the open plan office has evolved over the last 20 years. In particular, much research has been conducted regarding the effect of the acoustics in the workplace and how this influences productivity and wellbeing. In fact, the majority of office workers identify noise as a major concern. Studies have shown measure physical symptoms of stress and quantifiable loss of productivity when people are exposed to an uncomfortable acoustic environment.’

‘In recent years, it has become apparent that acoustic comfort in work environments is not only to do with noise levels but is also dependent on the degree to which we can clearly understand speech. The clearer or more intelligible speech is, the greater its potential to cause distraction. Conversely, the more muffled or less intelligible speech is, the less likely it is to be distracting to listeners and the more acoustic privacy is afforded to the speakers.’

‘Repetitive tasks such as stapling and filing may be best performed in a livelier area of the office, whereas tasks requiring complex calculation and memory would typically best be performed in a space with fewer distractions, both visual and auditory. It would seem, therefore, that good acoustic design for workspaces is not a case of ‘one size fits all’, nor is it as simple as ‘caves-and-commons’ but rather the inclusion of a range of areas with appropriate acoustics to their function, that is, varying levels of background noise and speech intelligibility.’

Our favourite Ocee products here at GREY are the FOUR US booth and the FLAP panels – both fantastic designs which are efficient and practical in the work space. Check them out here! Special thanks to Ocee design for collaborating with us on this post.